40 Years of Delivering High Quality

Over the years, an essential attribute of the “Strite brand” has become “experience” — not so much as defined by the amount of time and knowledge we’ve invested in our craft (as considerable as that may be), but more from the standpoint of how our customers experience a remodel project.

As Marketing Associate for STRITE design + remodel, I have the privilege — and challenge — of promoting a company that has spent nearly forty years building an enviable reputation in the Treasure Valley. To get a sense of just how solid that reputation is, I would invite you to take a look at our customer satisfaction ratings on Guild Quality.com (an excellent resource for anyone looking for reliable suppliers in their local residential building industry).

When 97% of third-party survey respondents say they would recommend Strite, you would be justified in wondering just how much of a challenge promoting our brand might be. Short of being the public relations director for “The Organization for the Advancement of Puppies, Kittens, and Toddlers,” marketing a company with the customer loyalty that Strite enjoys isn’t a bad gig. You’d figure I could get in a few naps during the day, or at least update my Facebook page on a more frequent basis.

The challenge with promoting almost any brand, however, is defining and communicating the attributes that constitute its “value proposition” — and Strite is no exception. In the case of the remodeling industry, the most obvious brand attributes are quality, delivery, and price.

As a professional services provider, the first two of these attributes, quality and delivery, are givens. That doesn’t mean they’re a slam dunk — it just means that we consider them to be the inalienable right of every customer. The third brand attribute, price, is a far trickier one. While you can choose to compete on price, all of us understand, at least on an intuitive level, that you can only cut so much cost out of any undertaking before you compromise quality (and even delivery, if you’re not fairly compensating your trades).

Over the years, an essential attribute of the “Strite brand” has become “experience” — not so much as defined by the amount of time and knowledge we’ve invested in our craft (as considerable as that may be), but more from the standpoint of how our customers experience their remodel projects. In measuring our success, it’s no longer enough that the people and processes in our organization deliver the expected result — we want the experience of that result to enhance our customers’ lives in very real and meaningful ways. To put it another way, we’ve gone from focusing simply on the quality of the customer outcome to including the quality of the customer experience.

If all this seems a bit “touchy feely,” consider this: We are in the business not just of “building stuff,” but of harmonizing people’s homes and lifestyles. Our customers’ needs generally go beyond, “We want another 1,000 square feet of space in our home.” Nowadays, their needs are more aspirational. “Now that our kids have left home, we want to do more entertaining, and our kitchen just doesn’t work.” If that’s not “touchy feely,” what is?

Focusing on the lifestyle aspirations behind a remodel project means, first of all, understanding those aspirations; and because the only people who truly know what those are are our clients, this also means that the “Strite experience” must connect with who they are, what they value, and the ways in which the esthetics of their environment not only reflect their lifestyle, but enhance it as well.

Involving our clients in their remodel project means helping them get in touch with “their inner designer.” We do this in part by asking a lot of questions, but also by encouraging them to pay attention to design elements that resonate with them. In one recent project, for example, our client did a Google search on “zen bathrooms,” which yielded a number of ideas for colors, textures, and fixtures that collectively expressed “the feeling of water,” as well as her feelings toward a cherished home of thirty years.

Being able to experience the connection between a personal sense of esthetics and how it might best express and reinforce itself in the remodel of a bathroom turned out to be an energizing and creative exercise that far outweighed the anxiety our client naturally felt about the change taking place in her home. We are, after all, creatures of habit. At the core of the value proposition underlying our brand is a commitment to immersing our clients in a creative process that not only yields a more beautiful and/or functional home, but also helps them realize that we are creatures of creativity as well. That’s an epiphany that stays with you long after a remodel is completed — and as ineffable as it may seem, it’s what the “Strite Experience” is about.